I'm almost ready to begin uploading photographs to my blog! And since I have to take a few days off from scanning - I'm out of archival storage pages for the negatives - I have time to get some of the pictures I've scanned ready for the web.

I'm going to only upload "web size" images and not provide links to higher resolution versions. Information on how to contact me is already on the blog and will be expanded.

That sent me in a different direction - expanding the IPTC and XMP data attached to the photos. I searched for "metadata" and found this article: Creating a Metadata Template in Adobe Photoshop CS through CS4 Now I've set up a template to apply the data (the process works just about the same in PS C6 though some of the screens have changed). And the beauty is I can add the information and keywords to tag the images as I apply the metadata to each batch of pictures!

I wanted to get the opinion of people here - should I still apply a watermark? I'm not thinking of one that would obscure the images, just a discreet label on the corner pointing people back to my website or the blog.

And is metadata the way to go for a non-professional that wants to share photos, but does not want just anyone to steal them and post them without some notice of where they came from?

I'm not sure I can legitimately copyright the images. I'm not the photographer (for some of the pictures it's not certain who the photographer was) and I'm not the executor or anyone in charge of the estates of my grandfather or my father (eventually I want to put up some of his photos, too). I just want to provide some attribution and contact information.

I would think that any metadata you can add can be removed using the same or similar software. It's a useful tool but not one that'll guarantee security.

I'd add a notice to your web pages that the images on the site are not there for the taking, and I'd add the watermark to each image. Sure, it can be removed, but it at least puts thieves on notice that you might be watching and lets casual users know, again, that you're showing them, not giving them, the images.

Now, suppose I steal one of your images. Whether I remove the watermark and metadata or not, how will you know that I've stolen it? You might stumble across it on the web. Or I think there are image search services that look across the web for images that are close to an image that you feed the service to search for. It'd be worth looking into that, if only to learn whether it's worth the time and effort it'd take to track down bad guys who may or may not exist.

If you're serious about establishing ownership (or let's say provenance in your case) look for a steganography program. Steganography is a way to encode text/data into images. Unless you're NSA/CIA (and perhaps not even then) it's undetectable. I don't know how well the encoded information would survive, say, the image being down/up sampled and JPGd. But it's worth asking.

Steve,
I guess what I will do is put a small watermark and the IPTC metadata on the web images, size them so they aren't very useful for commercial use, and put a statement on my blog that all images are mine with contact information if people want to use them.

Any other solutions are more time consuming and/or costly. For instance, TinEye API will automatically search for your images, but it's $200 for 5000 searches and I could reach that level pretty quickly. I'd rather put my money into archival storage for the original negatives and backing up my high resolution scans of them.

And if I keep dithering about this, the pictures will never get uploaded...

I think Steve comment is realistic. I'd do a sort of "watermark" as in at the edge of the image to provide your attribution and contact info rather than splat across the middle of the image which is what people who watermark usually do.

[rambling thoughts]
I went through the decision making process of how small to make images and I finally decided that I wanted people to be able to really see any image I put up on my (sadly neglected) web pages so generally, images on my web page are larger than pages where people decided to protect themselves more tightly. I also used to spend time every once in a while looking for my equine clipart images but I haven't done that in eons--sheer laziness on my part.
[/rambling thoughts]

Well, I went through a learning curve today and can't figure out how to make publicly visible albums the way I was expecting. So rather than continuing to attempt to swim upstream, I decided to set up static pages for each group of pictures.

The largest dimension of the web images is 1000 pixels - if you click on the pictures you see the larger version. I haven't done much digital restoration - just tweaking the brightness and contrast, using the healing brush on a few spots, and a little unsharp filter when the images are really out of focus.

They are not great photos, mostly of interest to family and some phosphate mining historians, but I want them to be where people can see them.

Once I get a number of pages set up, I will make a page of links to the various album pages and put that into the menu.

I'm finding some things I am not happy about with the formatting of the WordPress theme I'm using - the menu area is too wide, the content area is a static width and doesn't scale. I need to find out how to control the way the images display on a page. But I'm making progress! Once I get some content, I will spend some time creating my own theme and adjusting the things that bother me.

Oh, I thought I had found a setting that did not allow right clicking on the pictures, but darned if I can right click - maybe because I was still logged in as site administrator.

anne: I'm finding some things I am not happy about with the formatting of the WordPress theme I'm using - the menu area is too wide, the content area is a static width and doesn't scale.

Great minds think alike because I had just done a screen shot (see below) as I was thinking the same thing. Also, it's hard to read the text in the menu area because of the image.

>>maybe because I was still logged in as site administrator.

No...I can right-click an image. Really, not allowing right clicking is similar to the discussions on image size. For me, very personally, I'm irritated when I can't right-click which I often do to access commands that have nothing to do with copying images. That said, it's obviously your decision to make...'-}}

I love the Wright Sons images! I'd really like to see them in a restored/renovated state--along with the original unedited image.

I can't help you with the WordPress formatting as I know nothing about working with WP but, check your internal links.

If I click on your Swift & Co. link in your post above and then click on the leftmost image a new page displays (same window, http://woodswell.com/wp/?attachment_id=41 ) and if I click on the "Previous Image" option (that's the only option by the way, no "Next Image" option is displayed), rather than being taken back to the previous page (the actual blog entry that I was just looking at), it takes me to a new image (what I think is probably the 2nd (middle) image from the blog page: http://woodswell.com/wp/?attachment_id=40 ) with 2 options--Previous image and Next Image. If I click on Previous Image it takes me to: http://woodswell.com/wp/?attachment_id=8 with the title "Cropped-Merrrit-Header.jpg. If I click on Next Image, it takes me to: http://woodswell.com/wp/?attachment_id=41 which is sort of circular and I'm not sure that's what you meant to do?

Terrie,
Yes, there is some odd behavior going on that I need to figure out. I would expect any "next" or "previous" links to only travel among the images for that page/album.

I may have to pay for an album producing program - or just add links to jAlbum created albums. I've used jAlbum to make a number of photo albums (http://www.woodswell.com/Photos/Family/index.html) and while they are not fancy, they work more reliably than the blog seems to. I can always upload to the blog library only the photos I want to talk about in blog posts and set up additional photo albums where the others reside.

While the albums are produced in jAlbum, the web page where they are linked were not - and it was a hurry up job that I never got back to fix up properly. It's great having them up, though. I just made contact with a fourth or fifth cousin who knew little about the family history since she had been given for adoption as an infant. She is thrilled to see pictures of her ancestors and her grandparents

Anyway, another blog I visit often puts pictures in their posts and then has Galleries for their picture collections. She uses WordPress but apparently pays a web design company to maintain her site. Then, she sells web ads and has a huge following so can afford that. But it was her blog that convinced me that Word Press could handle what I need.

I'll keep plugging away at it. If nothing else I can try another blog software, but I'm going to see if WordPress can do what I need.